


Stalling

by ShadeCrawler



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 13:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12608156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadeCrawler/pseuds/ShadeCrawler
Summary: He's not going to win but that's not his mission. His mission is to stall. He can do that.I don't own TMNT 2012





	Stalling

He was on his knees, weapons gripped loosely in his hands. He could feel the eyes on him, waiting, stalking the small turtle as prey. He gripped his weapons tighter and slowly, painfully, worked himself into a crouch. 

He just needed to stall. Casey and April would have gotten the message to the rest of his family by now and he was sure they were already out of the lair, disappearing into the night. He just hoped they wouldn't get the idea into their heads to come and rescue him. He was okay with this. He would be the scrap goat if it just meant his family would be safe.

He cringed as the shriek of metal scraping against metal filled the air. They disguised the sounds of footsteps that he knew were coming closer to him. He breathed through the pain as he uncurled from a crouch into a stand. He adjusted his body into a defensive fighting stance, trying to put most of his weight onto his right leg and off of his left. Blood was trickling down his left thigh from a shallow cut. The cut shouldn't have hurt as much as it did but it was throbbing from all the running he had done, leading his attacker away from his home, his family. It was only one of the many injuries that was scattered across his body. 

The shrieking of metal faded and the footsteps grew louder. Surprisingly, this made anxiety and fear run through him. The posturing was over. His opponent was ready to end it, to end him. His head would be taken, placed in a box, and sent to his father and siblings. It would be the perfect way of mocking his father, almost telling him, "I took your wife, your daughter, and your home. Now I have taken your youngest son from you. Prepare for the rest of your children to be ripped from your arms." He wished at that moment that he could talk to his father and apologize for the pain that he would receive. Apologize for the grief, grief that had never left his father, that the killer would be adding to again. He wished that he could tell him 'thank you for raising me, loving me, teaching me, and taking me and my brothers in when you didn't have to. And if he had the time, he would apologize for not being able to win this fight and return to him.

Tears welled up in his eyes. He wanted to speak to his brothers. Tell them that he loves them and please don't grieve for him. He wanted to tell them that he didn't feel any pain in his last moments, even though it would be the biggest lie he would ever tell them. He would hug them, tell them that even if they hated him for it he was happy to die for them. 

"You can't win this fight." His shoulder twitched with surprise. He hadn't expected for his would-be-killer to start speaking. "I think you know that. Don't you, Michelangelo?"

The tone his attacker was using was slightly mocking, slightly gleeful. He was happy to finally get rid of one of the people that were always ruining his plans. He would be one enemy down and at worst have the rest grieving and been driven out of their home. If his plan succeeded he would have no more enemies at all. He thought that he would be able to take control of the city with absolute ease.

He thought he had won.

The smile was slow to grow at first. It started as a twitch of Mikey's lips and led to a full blown grin. His fighting stance wavered slightly as he tried not to laugh out loud. Hysterical giggles escaped him anyways.

The Shredder had actually thought he had won.

"You're kidding right? You don't really think I was ever trying to win?" Mikey shook his head in disbelief. The Shredder paused in his approach and just starred at him. "I mean, yeah, I was trying to survive and everything, but I always knew I wasn't going to beat you."

Shredder lifted one of his clawed hand in a clear threat. "Then why fight if you know you couldn't win? To stall? So your brothers can come save you?" The hand slashed through the air. "I've discovered where you live, you fool! I sent my foot soldiers to kill Hamato Yoshi and your pathetic brothers not thirty minutes ago. Their corpses are no doubt rotting in the sewars by now."

Mikey bit his lip in an attempt to fend off returning laughter. "Wow. You didn't know. One untrained teenager, one teen who only started training in nujitsu this past year, and a ninja who has no skill in stealth at all broke into your base, overheard your plans at lest an hour ago, and you didn't know."

A pause. "What?"

The hilarity of what Mikey had just discovered almost overwhelmed him. "The three of us thought you knew. We were trying so hard to be fast 'cause we thought you would put the plan into place sooner," A laugh escaped him and then he was laughing with no restraint. "And you had no idea we were even there!"

The Shredder didn't even twitch. His entire focus was on Mikey. 

"We weren't even supposed to be there." Mikey admitted through his laughter. "We were only supposed to go to April's house to get some food then go home because we broke our phones and had way to contact anyone if we got in trouble. We didn't even get there. April and I followed Casey when he snuck in. He overheard your foot soldiers talk about your plan and followed them in to hear some more. I'm amazed he wasn't caught."

"You're lying." The wind must have carried that whisper to Mikey because he could barely hear it. He never thought that a person's voice could be that quiet.

Mikey's laughter stopped and his grin turned sharp. " 'Fraid not dude. Better face facts, my man. It doesn't matter now if you kill me here. My family will live. That means you've lost." 

His body was swaying from the pain he was in, his head was pounding, and his grip on his nunchucks were slipping from the blood running down his fingers. The Shredder would have no problems killing him now with him as weak as a baby kitten. But it didn't matter. He won. His family would live, his brothers would live, his father would live, and that was enough. 

But he was trained as a ninja and was also raised to never give up. So when the Shredder let loose a howl of rage and attacked, he gave a battle cry and charged, injured leg and all. He wasn't going to win. He was going to die giving him family time to get away and live another day. 

He was okay dying for that.


End file.
